Search

Zitat

Newsfeeds

AK Vorrat: Planned registration of all air travel is unconstitutional (14.01.2008)

+++ Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (German Working Group on Data Retention): With the planned state-driven registration of all air travel the next anti-constitutional data retention lies right ahead. If the German federal government accepts the EU-proposal, we will file constitutional complaint to the German Federal Constitutional Court. +++

With the total recording of telecommunication behaviours in effect,
EU-Commissioner Frattini now wants to register all air travel by
European citizens without any given suspicion and save this data for 13
years in databases. Affected by this registration would be all flights
between Europe and Non-EU-States. A proposal for this is now available
to the Bundesrat (the German federal council) for discussion and will
be talked about on 31st January in its interior committee.

According to the EU-Commission the data of air travelers can be used to
check for "a range of criteria and behavioural patterns in order to
create a risk profile". This way "passengers with a elevated risk
potential can be filtered out". In the USA practices like these have
lead to many innocent people facing problems at customs clearance,
having their entry denied or even interrogation or imprisonment. [1]

"With the registration of millions of innocent tourists or business
travelers the next violation of the constitution is imminent", jurist
Patrick Breyer of the Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung warns. "The
Federal Constitutional Court clearly forbid such a way of mass data
collection - no matter what the timeframe or affected persons may be.
If the federal government repeats to disregard the constitution, we
will have to defend ourselves again by issuing constitutional complaint.

In contrast to the data retention the registration and collection of
all air travel data is planned to be pushed using a so called framework
decision. The Federal Constitutional Court has decided that
EU-framework decisions - unlike EG-regulations - have no superiority to
German law and can be "audited by the German jurisdiction to any
extend". [2] A framework decision can only be decided unanimously - so
with the help of the German federal government. In the Bundestag
(German parliament) SPD, CDU and CSU have the opportunity to issue a
dismissive statement, which the government is bound to. The
Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Hungary have already expressed their
denial of this procedure while the German federal government supported
the plan. [3]

The Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung appeals to the Bundesrat and
Bundestag to prohibit the federal government its' approval of this
anti-constitutional plan. Since there is no indication that a single
punishable act - let alone terrorist attacks - could not be prevented
by already available data the proposal already was useless in the first
place. It would waste millions of Euros, that are badly needed in other
places, for instance to revert the radical cuts in funding for projects
of violence prevention and personal cutbacks of 10.000 at the police
service we saw in the last few years. [4] According to the
EU-Commission the collection of air travelers data would cost 600
million euros of tax payer money in its first year, 73 million euros
per year after that. Meanwhile this would cost the airlines 18 million
euros in the first year and 7 million euros every following year. In
the end the citizens would have to bear the costs through higher taxes
or higher prices for air tickets.

"The federal government promises security, but all it delivers are
secured revenues for the surveillance industry", Ricardo Cristof
Remmert-Fontes of the Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung criticizes
and adds: "In a free society surveillance of every individuals travel
movements is just as out of place as the surveillance of an individuals
telecommunication behaviour."